Welcome to the return of theNEWDEAL's #THISDEALINHISTORY series!
Once a week tND releases a clip from a past show and Jamie walks us through it, all the while pointing out interesting musical tidbits and bringing us up to speed on what was going on inside those three pretty little heads on stage!
This week's #TDIH clip is taken from our set at the Bonnaroo Music Festival on June 15th, 2003. It's the first half of what appears to be a 40-minute jam. The second half will be posted as another #ThisDealInHistory clip at a later date.
I remember the following from this show: drinking Budweiser at 11:30 AM (the 11:30 beer isn't so surprising, but Budweiser?!), getting blown away by the North Mississippi All-Stars, and me and Dan modelling our new bucket hats that we bought at Wal-Mart the day before. We had decided that it was going to be Bucket Hat Day at tND Central, for some reason. I never wore the hat again, Dan didn't stop wearing his until 2007.
The clip starts with some jazzy synth chords accompanied by the classic Dan Kurtz "super-octaved" guitar-style lines played on the bass. I always loved when Dan dialled in that crazy tone and started funking away like Ray Parker, Jr. circa '76. As far as I'm concerned he never stayed with it long enough, but i guess there was a need for some low-end because we quickly jump into a full-band groove. Note how we're treated to three signature Dan Kurtz bass sounds in the first 45 seconds of this clip. There's the high-octave tone, the standard bass tone and his awesome sub-synth bass sound.
Around 1:05 I switch over to the Juno blip and we jam away until i play the trigger cue for VL Tone at 2:10. Clearly there was some on-stage hand communication because we also change keys. We were in the process of recording the "Gone Gone Gone" album at this time, so we were for sure interested in getting these tracks some onstage service time in case any interesting ideas popped up mid-set.
Without much delay we end VL Tone and dive immediately into another GGG track, in this case Homewrecker. Darren rocks the beatbox as only Darren can while Dan lays down some more funky mid-1970s lines. This set has an "afternoon performance" feel to it, which is probably because we were indeed playing an afternoon set. Those types of sets are a little heavier on the funk and a little lighter on the crazy Techno and House. That's because we know what it feels like to be listening to music in the afternoon on the third day of a festival - at that point your brain and ears are looking to get into a groove and not just get electrified with fast dance jams. Homewrecker leads into a smooth house jam which, following Dan's trigger cue at 12:37, slowly develops into "Deep Sun". As discussed in previous #TDIH's, just because a certain trigger gets played doesn't mean that we'll get to that song any time soon. In this instance it takes us another four minutes of development before we play the first note of "Deep Sun" proper. There are many instances where a cue might get triggered but we end up never getting to the actual song because the jam that followed ended up taking us in an entirely different direction.
We kick into the main part of Deep Sun at 16:47 (spot the "Inca Roads" micro-tease from 17:50-17:53?) followed by a key change and some drum+bass exploration at 18:10. The beatbox section also features what sounds like a theremin solo but is probably me rocking the resonance filter on the Moog Prodigy.
At 21:17 I play the trigger cue for G-nome (don't blink or you'll miss it). Clearly the band didn't blink because we immediately start making our way into G-nome.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of the New Deal Bonnaroo #ThisDealInHistory!
